Week 4 (2/14) Reading in 2011: What is a text?

DUE:
Form an affinity group for the final project based on your common interest in a particular library setting. Send a Google Doc briefly describing your group’s intention to the instructor.

ALSO DUE TODAY:
Using the Discussion tab, post your thoughts on the following: How is our concept of the novel evolving in light of new technologies? What does it mean to read in 2011? How must libraries change the way we work with patrons and students in order to account for these changes? Please post your thoughts by Friday, 2/4 and use the weekend to read and comment on the posts of others.


QUESTIONS:
How is our concept of the novel evolving in light of new technologies? What does it mean to read in 2011? How must libraries change the way we work with patrons and students in order to account for these changes?

READ:
Carr, N. (2008). Is Google making us stupid?: Why you can't read the way you used to. The Atlantic Monthly. 56.

Postman, N. (2006). Amusing ourselves to death: Public discourse in the age of show business. New York, N.Y., U.S.A.: Penguin Books.

WIRED bio of Marshall McLuhan http://www.wired.com/thisdayintech/2010/07/0721marshall-mcluhan-born/


OPTIONAL READING:
Baker, N. (2009, August 3). A new page: Can the Kindle really improve on the book? The New Yorker, 85, 24-30.

Fitzpatrick, K. (2006). Obsolescence, the marginal, and the popular. In The anxiety of obsolescence: The American novel in the age of television (pp. 201-233). Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press.

Update on Oprah-Franzen Book Club fracas
http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/16/oprah-picks-franzen-for-final-book-club/


REQUIRED VIEWING: McLuhan on the Today show



OPTIONAL VIEWING:

McLuhan on Media


Marshall McLuhan in "Annie Hall" (this links to a longer version with choppy sound)